The 500th anniversary of the first voyage of Columbus to the New World came in 1992, and this event was an occasion for celebration in both Europe and the Americas. It was also the occasion for much bitterness and anger by revisionists who wanted to downgrade the achievement of Columbus because of a perception that his discovery of America in the long run caused more harm than good. One thing that is wrong with the revisionist view is that it holds Columbus personally responsible for all that followed his exploratory journey. In truth, the "discovery" of America was inevitable, and the subsequent events derived from the character of European culture at the time and from the personalities of the various participants, notably the Conquistadors who saw this as the occasion for looting more than discovery. However, there were ill effects because of the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and one such effect has become known as the Columbian Exchange, the exchange of diseases between the Native Americans and the Europeans, an exchange in which the Native Americans got the worst of it. After the voyages of Columbus, the geography of the world had changed with an entire new continent appearing on maps of what would soon be seen as a globe instead of a flat surface. The geography of known disease also changed as Old World diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza found a new population with no immunity because it had had no exposure to these diseases before. After Columbus, these and other diseases would spread in the New World.
Columbus and his men introduced diseases into the New World which killed thousands of Indians who were not immune to organisms that had long since ceased to have any adverse effects on the Europeans. This as well is blamed on Columbus, though clearly he could not have known that this would be the result of his visit, even if he had known that he was arriving in a completely New World and not in...